Author: DVO

Luke’s Sermon on the Plain emphasizes a strong focus on social justice and caring for the marginalized, with Jesus directly addressing the poor and hungry, declaring their “blessedness” and highlighting the need to actively love and serve those on the fringes of society, rather than just focusing on personal spiritual practices alone; essentially, it’s a call to action for tangible change in the world, not just inward reflection. Fr. Ron Rolheiser writes that in the past, because we knew less, it was possible to be good and saintly and less involved in social justice, despite the fact that scripture and Christ’s explicit teaching make the call to justice just as non-negotiable as the call to prayer and private morality. Today we know more, not just because modern communications daily shows us the victims of injustice on our television screens and in our newspapers, but also, and especially, because we are less sociologically naive. Put positively, this lack of naivete means that we understand better how social systems affect us, both for good and for bad … and social justice is really about how systems affect us, especially adversely. It is very important that this be understood. Although they interpenetrate each other and depend upon each other, social justice and social morality are distinct from private charity and private morality. Private morality is something that, precisely, I do on my own. Other persons might guide me or inspire me, but, in the end, I am moral and charitable at this level on the basis of my own personal goodness and personal actions. Social justice, on the other hand, has to do with the social systems I am part of and participate in. I can be a good person in my private life, churchgoing, prayerful, kind, honest, gentle, and generous in my dealings with others, and still, at the same time, be part of a social, economic, political, and even ecclesial system that is unfair in that it works for the benefit of some at the cost of victimizing others. Issues such as war, poverty, violation of the ecology, feminism, native rights, abortion, and racism (to name just a few) are caused not just, nor indeed any longer primarily, by individual persons acting in bad conscience and doing bad things, but by huge impersonal systems which are inherently unfair and are, to an extent, beyond the control of the individuals who participate in them.

Jesus, for most of his ministry, used words. Through words, he tried to bring us God’s consolation, challenge, and strength. His words, like all words, had a certain power. Indeed, his words stirred hearts, healed people, and affected conversions. But at a time, powerful though they were, they too became inadequate. Something more was needed. So, on the night before he death, having exhausted what he could do with words, Jesus went beyond them. He gave us the Eucharist, his physical embrace, his kiss, a ritual within which he holds us to his heart. That is the best understanding of the Eucharist. I took long courses on the Eucharist during my undergraduate and graduate theological training. In the end, these didn’t explain the Eucharist to me, not because they weren’t good, but because the Eucharist, like a kiss, needs no explanation and has no explanation. If anyone were to write a four-hundred-page book entitled “The Metaphysics of a Kiss,” it would not deserve a readership. Kisses work. Their inner dynamics need no metaphysical elaboration. The Eucharist is God’s kiss. In a remarkable little essay entitled, In Praise of Skin, Brenda Peterson describes how she once was inflicted by a skin rash that no medicine could effectively soothe. She tried every kind of doctor and medicine to no avail. Finally, she turned to her grandmother, remembering how, as a little girl, her grandmother used to massage her skin whenever she had rashes, bruises, or was otherwise ill. The ancient remedy worked again. Her grandmother massaged her skin, over and over again, and the rash that seemingly couldn’t be eradicated disappeared. Skin needs to be touched. This is what happens in the Eucharist and that is why the Eucharist, and every other Christian sacrament, always has some very tangible physical element to it – a laying on of hands, a consuming of bread and wine, an immersion into water, an anointing with oil. An embrace needs to be physical, not only something imagined. When words aren’t enough. God has to pick us up, like a mother her child. Physical embrace is what’s needed. Skin needs to be touched. God knows that. It’s why Jesus gave us the Eucharist.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “The Eucharist as God’s Physical Embrace”, May 2006.

During the last year of her life, Therese of Lisieux corresponded regularly with a young man named Maurice, who was preparing to become a missionary. He was always afraid to tell her about his moral failures. Eventually, though, he did muster up the courage and trust needed to share his weaknesses with her, though only after first expressing his fear: “I was afraid that in love you would take on the prerogative of justice and holiness and that everything that is sullied would then become an object of horror for you.” Therese’s response to this comment is most noteworthy: “It must be that you don’t know me well at all if you are afraid that a detailed account of your faults would lessen the tenderness that I feel for your soul.” Our problem, given the fear that what is wrong in us will somehow lessen God’s affection, is that we rarely really lay bare what is actually inside of our hearts. Instead, we treat God as we would a visiting dignitary, namely, we show God what we think God wants to see in us, tell God what we think God would want to hear about us, and hide all those things that we feel will lessen God’s affection. Silly as it sounds, we, like Adam and Eve after the fall, try to hide our faults from God, worrying that if we really bared our souls, God would be displeased. The same is true in our church lives: Invariably, when we most need God and the support of the community of faith, we stay away from church and community. As Therese says: “You must not know me very well if you think that a detailed account of your faults would in any way lessen the tenderness I feel towards you.” In fact, on this score we might well learn a lesson from Adam and Eve. After they sinned, they too did what comes naturally, they hid and tried to camouflage their shame by their own efforts at clothing themselves. But their shame remained until God found them and gave them real clothing with which to cover their guilt. We do not know God very well at all when we fear coming into God’s presence replete with all that is within us, weaknesses as well as strengths. Nothing we do can ever lessen God’s tenderness towards us.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “On Not Hiding From God,” August 1999.

“It is not good to always be alone”—not just in terms of emotional loneliness but also in terms of healthy human and moral growth. “The human being needs a helpmate.” Those words, attributed to God just before the creation of Eve, are meant as an antidote to the pain of human loneliness and inconsummation. That is evident. At the deepest level of everything, from atomic particles through men and women, there is an archetypal primal imperative that says something can be whole only if it has two mutually complementary principles, one female and the other male. The uniting of gender is constitutive of nature itself. It is also not good to be alone for reasons that have to do with human maturity and morality. Simply put, when I am alone it is often a lot easier to be selfish, immature, given over to addictions and blind to the needs of others. All of us have an itch for privacy, for control, for ownership, to have things exclusively for ourselves, and to decide things all on our own. We also want our own space and the power to control things around us—and to walk in and out on others on our own terms. Family and community life today are struggling for exactly those reasons. It is dangerous to be alone, dangerous because, when we are alone, we do not have to adjust ourselves to another’s rhythm, another’s needs and another’s demands. It is then a lot easier to grow selfish. It is also not good to be alone for moral reasons. It is no accident that we like to be alone when we act out in relation to our addictions. All alcoholics crave privacy, as do those who have drug, sex or gambling addictions. Bad morality doesn’t want an audience. Nobody watches pornography with his family! It is not good to be alone. Everyone needs a helpmate, not just to not be lonely but also to be mature and moral.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Fr. Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “Why It’s Not Good to Be Alone” September 1996.

How can there be an all-loving and an all-powerful God if there is so much suffering and evil in our world? A colleague once challenged Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the French Jesuit Catholic Priest, with this question. You believe that good will ultimately triumph over evil; well, what if we blow up the world with an atomic bomb? What happens to goodness then? Teilhard answered this way. If we blow up the world with an atomic bomb, that would be a two-million-year setback, but goodness will triumph over evil, not because I wish it, but because God promised it and, in the resurrection, God showed that God has the power to deliver on that promise. He is right. Except for the resurrection, we have no guarantees about anything. That is our hope. Jesus was a great moral teacher, and his teachings, if followed, would transform the world. Simply put, if we all lived the Sermon on the Mount, our world would be loving, peaceful, and just; but self-interest is often resistant to moral teaching. From the Gospels, we see that it was not Jesus’ teaching that swayed the powers of evil and ultimately revealed the power of God. Not that. The triumph of goodness and the final power of God were revealed instead through his death, by a grain of wheat falling in the ground and dying and so bearing lots of fruit. Jesus won victory over the powers of the world in a way that seems antithetical to all power. He did not overpower anyone with some intellectually superior muscle or by some worldly persuasion. No, he revealed God’s superior power simply by holding fast to truth and love even as lies, hatred, and self-serving power were crucifying him. The powers of the world put him to death, but he trusted that somehow God would vindicate him, that God would have the last word. God did. God raised him from the dead as a testimony that he was right and the powers of the world were wrong, and that truth and love will always have the last word. That is why St. Paul says that if Jesus was not resurrected, then we are the most deluded of all people.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “The Triumph of Good Over Evil”, January 2021.

Our scriptures begin with the affirmation that what’s deepest in us, what defines us, is the IMAGO DEI, the image and likeness of God. To be in God’s “image and likeness” does not mean that we have stamped, somewhere in our souls, a beautiful icon. God, scripture tells us, is fire, wild, holy, undomesticated. To be in the image and likeness of God is to have this wildness in us. It’s this God-fire that these secular best-sellers are, each in its own way, referring to, and they are so popular because essentially what they say is true. Where, then, does Christian theology differ from them? On one very critical point: What Christianity (and every other great religion in the world) affirms, and what is generally lacking in these secular books, is the all-important insight that, while this fire is good and godly, we must never try to cope with it without connecting it to the other world. Anyone who tries to handle this energy without referring it to a world beyond our own will find that, far from being a source of wonder and enchantment, this fire will be a source of destruction, restlessness, and depression. Why? Precisely because this innate wildness over-charges us for life in this world. Divine fire trying to satiate itself solely within a finite situation, perhaps more clearly than anything else, explains why things don’t happen smoothly in our lives. There’s a divine fire within each of us. If we link ourselves to it properly and connect it to the other world, it becomes godly energy, the source of all that’s wonderful in life. However, if we run with the wolves, sit under Venus or Mars, and enter our wildness without reference to God and a world beyond, that fire will destroy us. Nobody can look at God and live! That’s not just a biblical statement but a practical formula for survival.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “Coping with the Imago Dei,” January 2002.

Skin needs to be touched! God knows that better than anyone. It’s why Jesus gave us the Eucharist. In the Eucharist, skin gets touched. The Eucharist isn’t abstract, a theological instruction, a creed, a moral precept, a philosophy, or even just an intimate word. It’s bodily, an embrace, a kiss, something shockingly physical, the real presence in a deeper way than even the old metaphysics imagined; for whatever reasons, we tend to shy away from admitting how radically physical the Eucharist actually is. St. Paul didn’t share that fear. For him, the physical communion that takes place in the Eucharist, between us and Christ as well as among ourselves, is as real and radical as sexual union. Our union with Christ and each other in the Body of Christ is intimate and real. Strong words. They’re predicated on a very earthy conception of the Eucharist. The late essayist and novelist Andre Dubus once wrote an extraordinary little apologia as to why he went to Eucharist regularly, despite the critical circles he moved in: “This morning I received the sacrament I still believe in: at seven-fifteen the priest elevated the host, then the chalice, and spoke the words of the ritual, and the bread became flesh, the wine became blood, and minutes later I placed on my tongue the taste of forgiveness and of love that affirmed, perhaps celebrated, my being alive, my being mortal. This has nothing to do with immortality, with eternity; I love the earth too much to contemplate a life apart from it, although I believe in that life. No, this has to do with mortality and the touch of flesh, and my belief in the sacrament of the Eucharist is simple: without touch, God is a monologue, an idea, a philosophy; he must touch and be touched, the tongue on flesh, and that touch is the result of the monologues, the idea, the philosophies which led to faith; but in the instant of the touch there is no place for thinking, for talking, the silent touch affirms all that and goes deeper: it affirms the mysteries of love and mortality.” Skin heals when touched. It’s why Jesus gave us the Eucharist.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s reflection, “The Eucharist as Touch”, October 2002.

Let’s briefly look at three men caught up in the divine drama: the prophet Isaiah, the apostle Paul, and Peter, the head of the Apostles and the first Pope. In many respects, they were quite different from one another. Isaiah was likely from an upper-class family, was apparently well-educated, and was married to a prophetess. Paul was also highly educated and a prize student of the great rabbi Gamaliel, and before his conversion on the Damascus Road, he was a fervent enemy of the budding Church. Peter was also undoubtedly fervent but did so as a fisherman and blue-collar businessman. Each man was called, in dramatic and personal fashion, to proclaim the Word of God in difficult, harrowing circumstances. The prophet Isaiah has a vision of the throne room of the Lord of hosts. Faced with God’s fascinating and mysterious presence, man discovers his own insignificance. Isaiah sees himself in the light of God’s holiness and recognizes his desperate plight, “Woe is me, I am doomed! For I am a man of unclean lips, living among a people of unclean lips.” Isaiah was told by the seraphim, “Now that this has touched your lips, your wickedness is removed, your sin purged.” Paul was also transformed and purified by a heavenly vision while traveling to Damascus, “a light from the sky suddenly flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, ‘Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?’ He asked, ‘Who are you, Lord?’ The reply came, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.’” Whereas Isaiah’s sinful lips were purified by fire, Paul’s blinded eyes were healed by the prayer and hands of Ananias, a disciple of Jesus Christ. Upon witnessing the miracle of the fish, Peter responded to God with the same humility as Isaiah and Paul: “Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man.” Yet Jesus does not ask only Peter and the apostles to be fishers of men; the Lord asks it of every son and daughter.

Shepherds train their sheep to be attuned to their voice and their voice only. The shepherd could walk away from the enclosure, calling his sheep, often by their individual names, and they would follow him. His sheep were so attuned to his voice that they would not follow the voice of another shepherd, even if that shepherd tried to trick them by imitating the voice of their own shepherd. How do we discern the unique cadence of God’s voice among all the voices that surround and beckon us? We have several principles that come to us from Jesus, scripture, and the deep wells of our Christian tradition that can help us.

• The voice of God is recognized both in whispers and in soft tones, even as it is recognized in thunder and storms.

• The voice of God is recognized wherever one sees life, joy, health, color, and humor, even as it is recognized wherever one sees dying, suffering, conscriptive poverty, and a beaten-down spirit.

• The voice of God is recognized in what calls us to what’s higher, sets us apart, and invites us to holiness, even as it is recognized in what calls us to humility, submergence into humanity, and in that which refuses to denigrate our humanity.

• The voice of God is recognized in what appears in our lives as “foreign,” as other, as “stranger,” even as it is recognized in the voice that beckons us home.

• The voice of God is the one that most challenges and stretches us, even as it the only voice that ultimately soothes and comforts us.

• The voice of God enters our lives as the greatest of all powers, even as it forever lies in vulnerability, like a helpless baby in the straw.

• The voice of God is always heard in a privileged way in the poor, even as it beckons us through the voice of the artist and the intellectual.

• The voice of God always invites us to live beyond all fear, even as it inspires holy fear.

• The voice of God is heard inside the gifts of the Holy Spirit, even as it invites us never to deny the complexities of our world and our own lives.

• The voice of God is always heard wherever there is genuine enjoyment and gratitude, even as it asks us to deny ourselves, die to ourselves, and freely relativize all the things of this world.

It would seem that God’s voice is forever found in paradox.[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s reflection: “Searching for God Among Many Voices”, July 2024.

God is unimaginable. God cannot be circumscribed and put into a mental picture of any kind. Thank goodness. If God could be understood, God would be as limited as we are. But God is infinite. Infinity, precisely because it’s unlimited, cannot be circumscribed. Hence, it cannot be captured in a mental picture. Indeed, we don’t even have a way of picturing God’s gender. God is not a man, woman, or some hybrid, half-man and half-woman. God’s gender, like God’s nature, is intellectually inconceivable. We can’t grasp it and have no language or pronoun for it. God, in a modality beyond the categories of human thought, is somehow perfect masculinity and perfect femininity all at the same time. It’s a mystery beyond us. But while that mystery cannot be grasped rationally, we can know it intimately. We can know God in a radical intimacy, even as we cannot conceptualize God with any adequacy. God may be ineffable, but God’s nature is known. Divine revelation, as seen through nature, as seen through other religions, and especially as seen through Jesus, spells out what’s inside God’s ineffable reality. And what’s revealed there is both comforting beyond all comfort and challenging beyond all challenge. What’s revealed in the beauty of creation, in the compassion that’s the hallmark of all true religion, and in Jesus’ revelation of his Father takes us beyond a blind date into a trustworthy relationship.  Nature, religion, and Jesus conspire together to reveal an Ultimate Reality, a Ground of Being, a Creator and Sustainer of the universe, a God who is wise, intelligent, prodigal, compassionate, loving, forgiving, patient, good, trustworthy, and beautiful beyond imagination. And as our reflection verse tells us, he will “never forsake you or abandon you.”[1]

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[1] Excerpt from Ron Rolheiser’s reflection: “God’s Ineffability”, September 2015.